EDITORIAL Cherish and Enrich Our NFPTE Legacy

1 TELECOM 25 DECEMBER, 2016 EDITORIALC herish and Enrich Our NFPTE LegacyThe saga of P&T trade union movement is an integral part of our freedom movement. Organized movement of Postal and telegraph workers were accelerated by our forefathers Henry Barton and Tarapada by forming unions in Telegraph, postal and RMS. The trials and tribulations, struggles and sacrifices are classics to the core and stand as our own epics. The call of Tarapada to organ-ize the workers with a purpose, with determination and accustom the power of class brothers is still reverberating and inspiring us all.

2 Workers are not beggars, they have right to choose is the finest slogan that the Indian working class ever heard. Every year when we crosses the day of Nov. 24th, the historic day of the formation of our great edifice NFPTE , every employee of P&T can feel elated and recollect our finest postmen struggle of 1946 led by senior leader Dalvi and Dada Ghosh is viewed not for any sectional demands alone but a struggle to expedite the achievement of freedom. The need of carrying forward the tradition of Tarapada of AIPRMS by installing new leadership was felt by Dada Ghosh and others and that fulfilled the ad-vent of young and energetic visionary Gup-ta to our movement.

3 Then AITUC leaders Com. and Dange helped in this regard. We salute them all in this efforts of young O. P. Gupta with the help of Dada Ghosh, and others to es-tablish a single union from the bush of multiple unions was accepted thro a merger resolution and the attempt of unifying the movement was greatly achieved by formation of UPTW just two days be-fore independence on Aug. 13, 1947,The pay commission and DA issues made UPTW to issue strike notice, first ever by O. P. Gup-ta. The leaders were arrested. Gupta was detained for 14 months and even habeas corpus was not al-lowed.

4 Leaders like K G Bose and Janak Gupta were dismissed. Com became SG of UPTW when Gupta was in jail. The need of rea-lignment of Unions with federal setup was felt by both the leadership and GOI. Shri Jagajivan Ram and Rafi Kidwai initiated the scheme and the for-mation of NFPTE on November 24, 1954 thus be-came a historic occasion. It was a federal setup of 9 unions of postal, RMS, Telegraph, Telecom and Administration wings with a compulsory federation. Comrades Dalvi and Dadaghosh became the first president and secretary the important issues of all walks of employees, the issue of Wiping out discrimina-tion of Class 4 and 3, issues of casual labour and ED were all taken up by NFPTE .

5 On the issues of second pay commission strike notice was served against Nehru Government. There was a glorious strike of 5 days of all CG employees during July 1960. The SG of NFPTE com P. S. R. Anjeneyalu was handcuffed with chains and many leaders got arrested. Employees shot dead on firing. Thou-sands of employees were terminated, suspended, arrested. ESMA was launched to threaten the strik-ers. The repression was let loose and was in great order. Recognition of NFPTE was withdrawn. Com O. P. Gupta with his own inimitable style undergone indefinite fast with E.

6 X. Joseph to restore recog-nition. Com. s arrival at the NFPTE Hqrs added momentum and he played a prime role in the formation of whitley council type JCM. The conditionality of abjuring Strikes for accepting JCM was rejected forthright by the leadership. The powerful one day strike of , 1968 of all CG employees on the issue of need based Minimum wage and compulsory arbitration of JCM issue was also faced worst oppression and severe attacks from Government. The next generation leaders like Jagan emerged as heroes of the strike and got dismissal orders.

7 The strike was led in P&T by SG Ninety thousand employees were suspended and thousands were terminated and got arrested. The recognition of NFPTE was with-drawn. Com Gupta and Gnanaiah both had gone on indefinite fast fighting topless- bottomless rec-ognition that is no federation and no grass root dis-tricts and branches. The recognition was restored but with the formation of FNPTO split in communist party also made its adverse impact on NFPTE . Constant tussle and difference of opinions were becoming the part of NFPTE life during the time of 1974 Railway strike and Emergency of Indra Gandhi period.

8 NFPTE was severely attacked during the emergency and TELECOM 26 DECEMBER, 2016its main Organs like P&T labour, weekly corre-spondence, telecom were not dispatched from the post office. Comrade Jagan boldly took the risk of dispatching the journals thro Tamilnadu Organ Olikkathir and made history. The impact of emer-gency made us all to reunite in NFPTE and at Ban-galore federal council during 1978 Gupta became the Secretary General of strike notice issued for bonus by Gupta and Ramamurthy after the announcement of the same for railways during Charan Singh period roused the workers and the issue was settled and Com.

9 Gnanaiah signed the agreement of bonus. Our sil-ver jubilee session of Jaipur coined the prime de-mands like Two promotions and then we achieved the same. The Telecom wing gave shramdhan to postal comrades for promotion to lakhs of senior employees who were all suffered more than 20 years without any single promotion on a single day on the issuance of order, lakhs of our senior employees got their time bound P&T department was bifurcated in 1985 and it led the formation of NFTE- NFPE two federa-tions. The conference held at Calcutta in 1986 re-solved to keep NFPTE also because of emotional attachment of many leaders from both sides.

10 NFTE inherited from the great tradition of NFPTE the fol-lowing qualities- toleration of all views, fighting the cause of needy the lower level workers, always fighting out any sort of discrimination, never bang-ing the doors of negotiation and preferring negoti-ated settlement, if negotiation fails never fail to hit, if hitting then hitting hard, no individual militancy- even one step with all only- things may be difficult to do but nothing is impossible attitude- unity at any cost even at the cost of oneself- no self patting or ego or eulogizing, no political overtones great struggles of Gupta- Chandrasekar- Jagan made the historic achievement of regu-larization lakhs of casual labours, thousands of RTPs during 1986-87.